Write word-centos of poetry by Timothy Green,
Collin Kelley, John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper.
A word-cento is one of my invented forms of poetry.
It is a rearrangement of the words of a poem by a
single author. I try to exhaust every single word of
the poem (though lately I’ve only been doing some).
I lose the structure of the original poem, do not
position any two unique words next to each other,
and the resulting poem is a response to or a
continuation of the original poem.

 

DREAM A POEM OF HOPE

(a word-cento of Timothy Green’s
“The Body” *)

Dream a poem of hope,
of sentimental moonlight,
shining silent sadness over
a distant glow of hope
fluttering electric warmth.

Forgive a jukebox revolution
in the moonlight rumble
of unnamable hope;
a poem dream that sweeps
steamstack lightning
in electric light,
the lamplight bleeding
a silent hope.

* Original poem by Timothy Green from
American Fractal (Red Hen Press, 2009).

 

HONEY-OPIUM SKY

(a word-cento of Collin Kelley’s
“At Prospect Cottage” *)

Honey-opium sky blinds pain,
listening to a sea of traffic,
fading in flower fevers,
drifting in desolation.

* Original poem by Collin Kelley
published in Impossible Archetype.

 

SHIVERING RAIN

(a word-cento of John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper’s
“While We May” *)

Shivering rain flitted
a fecundity of frittered strength,
drunkenness glows glad,
enrapt in the eye
afar from the breeze
we should have loved.

* Original poem by John Jack Jackie (Edward) Cooper
published in The Rainbow Project. May 1, 2020.

 

Joshua Corwin, a Los Angeles native, is a neurodiverse, 2-time Pushcart Prize-nominated, Best of the Net-nominated poet and Winner of the 2021 Spillwords Press Award for Poetic Publication of Year. His poetry memoir Becoming Vulnerable (2020) details his experience with autism, addiction, sobriety and spirituality. His work has appeared in Winning Writers, The Somerville Times, Palisadian-Post, National Beat Poetry Foundation, Stanford University’s Life in Quarantine and more. He has lectured at UCLA, published alongside Lawrence Ferlinghetti and read with 2013 U.S. Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco. He hosts the poetry podcast “Assiduous Dust,” writes the weekly “Incentovise” column for Oddball Magazine and teaches poetry to neurodiverse individuals and autistic addicts in recovery at The Miracle Project, an autism nonprofit. Corwin is the editor and producer of Assiduous Dust: Home of the OTSCP, Vol. 1, featuring a collaboration with 36 award-winning poets demonstrating one of his invented forms of poetry. He is currently working on an existential novel about an alcoholic lawyer plagued with suicidal ideation.